Yoko Ono Requests Photos Of Smiles For Manchester Festival Project

Yoko Ono has put out an open call for people to circulate a photo of their smile to say, “Hello. How you doing?” for a new exhibition, do it 20 13, which opens this week at Manchester Art Gallery as part of the Manchester International Festival. People can upload their images Here

Many of the world’s leading artists, including Ai Weiwei, Tracey Emin and Gilbert & George, are taking part in the exhibition, one of the most ambitious and far reaching exhibition projects ever staged. Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, and commissioned by MIF with Manchester Art Gallery, the show is an evolving exhibition created from a series of instructions written by artists. An eclectic mix of things for visitors to do at the gallery and at home, the instructions range from the active to the absurd to the philosophical.

Highlights include the Ten Commandments by Gilbert & George; Michelangelo Pistoletto’s instructions for making newspaper sculptures; a web of bottles by Tracey Emin; Theaster Gates on how to catch the Holy Ghost in a Shopping Mall; Christodoulos Panayiotou’s homage to Joan Brossa; Adrian Piper’s The Humming Room; Paul McCarthy’s Snow White Cook Book; Maria José Arjona’s performance with a vulture, and Ai Weiwei’s instructions on how to make a spray device to block a surveillance camera.
 
The exhibition is divided between five rooms – the Homage Room, the Archive Room, the Active Room, the Games Room and do it TV. The Homage Room will feature 20 instructions by deceased do it artists, realised especially for Manchester by 20 living artists. These will include Sarah Lucas reacting to Franz West, Tracey Emin enacting the instructions of Louise Bourgeois,Ernesto Neto re-enacting Lygia Pape, Olafur Eliasson/Francesca Varela and Tino Sehgal/Felix Gonzalez Torres. The Archive Room will contain ephemera and documentation from participants of the last 20 years of the project including Leon Golub, Mike Kelley, Shere Hite, and Cedric Price, the Active Room and the Games Room will contain a series of artists’ instructions aimed at the public and do it TV will screen the video works produced as part of the do it project. There will also be instructions throughout the building and interventions within the collection galleries to discover.

Visitors can upload their own interpretations of a selection of the instructions at doit2013.org
 
do it 20 13 is commissioned and produced by Manchester International Festival and Manchester Art Gallery. Developed in collaboration with Independent Curators International (ICI), New York.

Photo: Yoko Ono © Michael Lavine

Tags

, ,